“Goodbye Love, Goodbye”
Creative Staff:
Story: Steve Orlando, Jon Tsuei
Art: Rubine
Colors: DC Alonso
Letterer: Carlos M. Mangual
What They Say:
There’s no time for Aaron to mourn the loss of those close to him when the Margolis family plans a brazen heist on a Hu drug shipment. All goes according to plan until it doesn’t and the heist turns into a knock-down, drag-out battle through the streets of Dalian.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Steve Orlando and Jon Tsuei packaged a lot of things into the first few issues of the series, almost too much in a way, but it really did capture the way other stories that have started similarly before, especially in film. I’ve enjoyed both writers’ works over the years so a team-up feels pretty natural with a mixture of scripting/dialogue and overall concept approach to things and this issue feels like their talents blended together well. Rubine’s artwork for the series has been strong and that carries through here in an even better way as things feel like they’re more cohesive and straightforward. Their designs are the big win for me here and Alonso’s coloring helps to give it all that extra depth and clarity to really stand out well.
As the series has progressed, it’s been a bit rough keeping track of the back and forth between the families and what’s going on, but this issue just makes it clear heading into the finale next time around that Aaron has no friends. Well, outside of MK at this point, who we see skating with him during some downtime at the start where she’s trying to get him to remember that he’s got someone watching his back here. Which he needs even though he won’t admit it, and someone to remind him of his commitments overall because we see how he’s forgotten to check in on his mother as his father’s funeral was hours ago in the middle of the night where he is. It’s not a good look for him and he does take it badly because he knows he’s become so caught up in this fight and trying to figure out where he belongs. This is amusing because even though that he’s aligned with, the Margolis, are now looking to eliminate him.
With the shipment that the family is counting on coming in, they set things in motion to to swipe it from the Hu so they can rebuild and have a strong claim of outmaneuvering their opponents in acquiring it. It’s a messy and complicated presentation because some of these characters have not really established themselves strongly on this monthly title, but you see quickly how they’re trying to take out Aaron. And it’s only because MK was involved that he really does survive. He’s set off, however, and intent on dealing a healthy blow to both families that he doesn’t really want to belong to at this point. Of course, if he had just left early and not come back he could have avoided a lot of this, but now he’s all-in and it’s setting us up for an explosive finale with what could be quite the body count.
In Summary:
Search For Hu sets us up for the finale in a pretty much an expected way here. It does move quickly into some of this but it’s got a lot of the familiar threads that you could see early on in how this would unfold because of family dynamics and the outsider that Aaron really is. The subplot with MK is a bit frustrating as Aaron should know better and at this point MK just needs to be blunt with him because he’s being stupidly oblivious about things. I’m definitely curious to see if the finale goes for the big blowout that it seems to be promising and if it can do it in a way that delivers something meaningful for Aaron by the end, or if he just ended up making a huge mess and missed out in some key events with his family in America.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: December 22nd, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
